It's not for nothing that multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett is known as the ‘Sage of Omaha’.

Shares in his investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway smashed through the $200,000 barrier yesterday to an all-time high. It means anyone who bought 10 shares at $7,100 each in 1990 would today be holding an investment worth a cool $2million.

Buffett started buying stock in the company in 1962, when it was a textiles business, timing his purchases to exploit patterns he had spotted in share price movements. Some 52 years later, the business is worth $326billion, more than the Danish economy.

Berkshire owns 100 per cent of insurance giants including Geico and General Re, stakes in everything from American Express to Coca-Cola, and has £30billion of cash to spend on acquisitions. Profit for 2013 was up 31 per cent to a record $19.5billion, on revenues of $49.7billion.

This imperial juggernaut was jump-started by Buffett’s shrewd investments in insurance during the 1960s, but owes just as much to his legendary obduracy.

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The Sage had agreed a verbal offer of $11.5 a share for his stock from the firm’s boss, Seabury Stanton, in 1964, but was infuriated when the formal bid came through slightly lower at $11.375. Offended by the attempt to ‘chisel’ him, Buffett bought more shares and fired Stanton.

Buffett said in 2010 that this was a mistake. Had he ditched shares in the struggling textile firm, he claimed, he could have built a company worth an extra $200billion by investing even more cash in insurance.

Half a century later, his army of disciples are prepared to ignore a blunder that made Warren Buffett worth £35billion.